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If you could call 2023 a year of something connected with tech space, it would surely be the year of AI. Following the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and its various offshoots, all the tech giants started developing AI-based solutions for their services, and this year we’ve seen them implemented everywhere. Meta got its hand in the game andintroduced AI into Facebook Messenger, Google came out with Bard, and various other tech companies utilized artificial intelligence to make their services better and more user-friendly.
One of the companies that went all-in on AI is Microsoft. However, it has a bit of a leg up. It’s been workingclosely with OpenAIto create various artificial intelligence tools to help improve our lives. The company, after introducing a great Ai-poweredproductivity tool called Loop, is going much further now and integrating AI into its search engine, the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 as well.
Some of the features that Microsoftunveiled during Microsoft Igniteare completely new, but some of them you might already know by a different name. We’re here to help guide you through all the features on offer and what Microsoft’s AI can do for you.
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What is Microsoft Copilot?
The name Microsoft Copilot has been thrown around for some time now, but every time it seems to mean something a bit different. Let’s just break it down and see what exactly hides behind this marketing slogan:
Copilot rebranding
First, there is the Copilot brand. Microsoft rebranded all its AI-powered companions as Copilot, adding specialized monikers to each of them. Therefore, a Copilot is an AI companion that is baked into Microsoft services and other apps, allowing you to use it as a helping hand when working or creating. There are already a bunch of these Copilots, and Microsoft wants to create more specialized versions for the most important apps in its own portfolio.
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As we said, Microsoft Copilot encompasses a range of specialized AI assistants, including what was originally known as Bing Chat or Bing AI. This is one of the oldest AI-powered assistants in Microsoft’s array, offering functionalities akin to those of ChatGPT. It excels in tasks such as conducting specialized searches, formatting data, coding, and other advanced activities facilitated by AI companions.
In an effort to streamline its product offerings, Microsoft rebranded the AI chatbot to Copilot. This transition involved more than just a change of name. It introduced enhanced features, including support for the latest GPT-4 Turbo model. The upgrade aimed to improve the interaction quality with the chatbot, delivering responses that are not only more precise and lifelike but also more helpful to users.
Does Microsoft Copilot use ChatGPT?
Yes. In 2019, Microsoft started amulti-billion dollar investment in OpenAI. Shortly after, we started seeing OpenAI producing interesting things like the incredible image generation toolDALL-E 2and the now popularChatGPT.
The latter of these two is an intelligent AI-driven chat tool that’s able to have human-like conversations, answer questions, suggest ideas and assist you with all sorts of different tasks. It is artificial intelligence that has been trained on a large language model and a large multimodal model. This means it’s been trained on large datasets and with human interactions, but hasn’t had access to search the web.
Things are moving fast though and OpenAI is constantly working to improve its toolset. SinceChatGPT 4appeared, the AI has been making waves by doing all sorts of things including composing essays, writing code, suggesting business ideas. Evenpassing the bar.
In February 2023, Microsoft revealed it wasusing ChatGPTto power “the new Bing” integrating next-generation AI into Bing search.
With the power of AI, Microsoft Copilot is now more than just a search engine, because it’s also a conversational tool and one that Microsoft is calling your “AI Copilot for the web.” With these new tools, it is set to “deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content.”
How to access Copilot on Bing
Accessing what was formerly known as Bing Chat, now rebranded as Microsoft Copilot, is easy – as the AI chatbot integrated into Bing:
How to use Copilot in Microsoft Edge
In March 2023, Microsoft started integrating its AI-powered Bing search intoMicrosoft Edge. The company began rolling out stable versions of the browser with the Bing AI chatbot built right into the sidebar as standard.
Referred to as “Edge Copilot,” “Bing chat,” and “Discover,” this tool now sees you being able to get answers directly from your browser with the power of your own AI assistant. Microsoft says that Edge Copilot can do things like summarizing web content, searching the web for answers and even creating content for you.
Microsoft notes that Bing AI isn’t perfect (yet) and won’t always be 100% factual:
“Bing aims to base all its responses on reliable sources, but AI can make mistakes, and third-party content on the internet may not always be accurate or reliable. Bing will sometimes misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate or inappropriate. Use your own judgment and double-check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on Bing’s responses.”
To use Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Edge, follow these steps:
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Microsoft isn’t stopping at just Bing and Edge with AI, it’s also integrating the intelligence intoMicrosoft 365as well. Known as “Copilot” this is a tool to help people with creating documents, reading and summarizing emails, crafting presentations and more besides.
“… more intelligent (and actually useful) alternative to the classic Microsoft Office assistant Clippy.”
Think of it as a much more intelligent (and actually useful) alternative to the classic Microsoft Office assistant Clippy. Copilot can be used throughout Microsoft’s Office suite. It can assist inMicrosoft Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. So, whether you need help managing a PivotTable in Excel or keeping on top of your inbox, Copilot will be there to help you out.
Microsoft presented some of the powerful functions of Copilot and what it can do. This includes helpful things like quickly summarizing long email threads or analysing great swathes of spreadsheet data.
Key features in Microsoft 365 Copilot
One of the most powerful demos of what Microsoft Copilot can do is demonstrated with Copilot being used in Excel (see the video above). You can use this AI tool to analyze your data and then do things like look for trends in particular data sets, create new sheets and graphs based on it and even explain its workings and how it came to those findings.
Copilot has different uses in several of the Microsoft365 apps:
Microsoft 365 Copilot is still inthe early stages, but on Aug 04, 2025 it finally started a rollout to Microsoft’s enterprise customers. This unfortunately means that it’s still not available for casual users of Microsoft’s office suite, and the company only says that it’ll be available to consumers at a later date.
What is Windows Copilot?
At its Build event in May 2023, Microsoft introduced the version built directly intoWindows 11: Windows Copilot.
With Windows Copilot, you can open up a chat window directly from the desktop and ask Copilot to help you with tasks or retrieve information. The difference here is that it’s built directly into the operating system, so it has access to system controls and documents, as well as the ability to open and control applications.
Microsoft’s demo showed Windows Copilot setting the system to dark mode, snapping windows into place and summarizing a business plan document. It’s even able to recommend music, openSpotifyand begin playing it.
A lot of Microsoft’s Build presentation focused on plugins and how third-party developers can integrate with Windows Copilot, so we expect the AI’s capabilities to expand as the platform matures. Currently, Microsoft says that 50 plugins are available, but thousands more are on the way.
Windows Copilot launched in beta in June 2023 as part of the Windows 11 Insider preview, andwas finally delivered to Windows 11 users on Sept. 26, 2023via a Windows Update.
What is Copilot Pro?
With all the advancements that Microsoft is cramming into its Copilot project, a paid subscription-based model for that feature was inevitable. In a new blog post explaining the newest update for Copilot, Microsoft introduced its Copilot Pro plan, for individual users.
The Copilot Pro subscription is aimed at individuals who want to utilize Copilot across multiple devices and have the quickest access to the newest features and AI models. Here are the most important changes that Copilot Pro introduces:
Copilot Pro cost
Is Microsoft Copilot available to use now?
Microsoft is currently steadily rolling out its Copilot companions to many of its apps.
However, the company also has many more types of AI in store for different kind of uses and clients. Its new Loop app uses AI to help facilitate working together. There are also different Copilots for enterprise users, as well as one baked into Windows 11.
Here are some of the release dates of Microsoft’s different Copilots:
